Careful of Nostalgia
by SigmaTheta
Summary: It isn't as though they'll live long enough to regret any of this. Daud and Billie on the Dreadful Wale. (DotO spoilers. Written for Age Gap Exchange 2019.)


Daud spends some time staring down at his own face on the old, yellowing wanted poster in his hands. This one must have gone up long after he had already fled Dunwall, and the precise list of crimes has been amended, the coin on offer for his death increased, but the picture beside the words is one he remembers well.

Seeing it now feels more like meeting the eyes of an oddly familiar stranger than looking into a mirror.

He's seen Billie's new poster as well, glaring at him from the walls just as she would have in the old days over a job she didn't agree with. Without the changes to her hair and to her particular crimes, it could have been pulled from any Dunwall alley fifteen years ago. Except, of course, for the fact that the Watch had never seen her face well enough to draw it. He can remember her showing one to him when they first went up, laughing at the sketch of her whaling mask, grinning with vicious pride at the price on her head, second only to Daud himself.

He kept it for a while, even after her betrayal, and eventually lost it to the wind crossing one sea or another. Easy to chide Billie for such sentimentality when he'd done it himself.

With a sigh, he hands his poster back. "It's a wonder you were able to find me, if this is who you were looking for."

"It's still a pretty good likeness," Billie says, rolling her eyes as she takes it from him. "You've gotten awfully vain since I left, making all this fuss over a little white hair." Her hand reaches out as though to brush a few strands away from his face, and he nearly closes his eyes in anticipation of the touch, but she stops short, fingers hovering near his temple. With a shake of her head, she lets the hand drop, turns, and walks briskly to her board to put the poster back up in its place. "Anyway, I _did _find you."

She busies herself for a while with her pins and labels, replacing the clues that led her here with the scant information they have so far on their next task, and Daud is content to watch her at this. It's strangely pleasing to see that Billie still plans out a job the way he taught her, carefully adjusting markers on her map and stringing connections between new and old leads.

She steps back once she takes down the last of the unneeded papers, frowning down at the creased letter that tops the pile. "I thought about looking for you before," she tells him, ending the long silence. "More than once. I knew I could find you if I tried, but… I don't know. I spent so long working at being anyone but Billie Lurk that I was afraid of going too far back. And I wasn't sure you'd want to see me again, with how we ended last time." An ironic smile passes over her features as she shakes her head again, turning to dump her pile of papers into an empty crate. "Did you ever–?"

"Yes," Daud says immediately. "I looked for you." He drums his fingers against his knee for a moment, considering, before giving a shrug and adding, "I even found you, once."

Billie turns around sharply, brow furrowed. "When was this?"

"Seven, maybe eight years ago?" he says, rubbing at his chin as he thinks back. "Some darkened bar backroom in Bastillian where you were trying to sell off old bone charms. That's how I knew for certain it was you, recognized the ones you took when you left."

"That was a bad year for the smuggling business," she recalls with a slow nod. "I needed the coin, and I didn't have anything else worth near as much." She crosses her arms and frowns at him. "Why didn't you say anything to me then?"

"You had a new life, and you seemed content," he says with another shrug. "And I didn't think you'd want to see me again."

The corner of her mouth twitches, then her frowns breaks completely as she starts laughing. She lets her arms fall to her sides and shakes her head, crossing the room to drop herself down onto the cot right beside Daud. "All those years…" she says, grinning at him as she nudges her shoulder against his. "We're a couple of old fools, huh?"

He snorts at that, though he can't quite keep the smile from his own face. "You're hardly any older than I was when we first met."

"Yeah?" She knocks her ankle against his boot. "Well, you were old back then, too."

He laughs quietly and doesn't argue, shaking his head as he leans back against the wall behind them. The silence that falls over the room then is a pleasant one, free of the tense uncertainty that had been lingering since their reunion, and he is comfortable here with Billie still grinning fondly at him, her arm against his, her knee pressed to his thigh.

With her face so close to his, he catches it immediately when something in her expression changes. There were reasons Billie was always most comfortable wearing her mask, and he can still read her even easier than most, despite the years lost between them.

When she reaches for him this time, she does not stop herself. Her fingers rake slowly through his hair once, then slip back down to trace the line of his jaw.

He doesn't pull away, but the question must be clear on his face. That ease of reading very often went both ways.

"Something else I've thought about doing," she explains with a shrug, and he's satisfied enough with that answer to let his eyes close and move to meet her halfway.

It would be a lie, after all, to claim such a thought never once crossed his own mind in all their years together, a flicker of fantasy behind tired eyes after long hours spent planning over maps and notes or huddled together on a high rooftop waiting for their target to move. Always brief and passing and easily brushed aside. Dismissed, with only the slightest hint of guilt, as unlikely and unhelpful to their work.

Daud doesn't bother trying to muster such restrained feelings now. It isn't as though he'll live long enough to regret any of this.

He willingly leans back as she pushes forward, hand curling around the back of her neck to keep her close as they move, eager despite a slowness from both that can't be put down solely to the caution of approaching something so new and unfamiliar.

He is old and tired now, aching bone-deep from his last fights in that pit, and there's a weariness radiating from Billie that goes well beyond her age. This would have been easier ten years ago, five years ago. But he knows himself, knows Billie still, even with the passage of time, and they never would have allowed themselves this without the certainty of death hovering over them. It's a small miracle that even that is enough.

He shifts his arm to pull her even closer and grunts as his elbow strikes the hard edge of the cot frame.

Billie pauses, pulling back slowly. "We can move somewhere else," she offers, brow crinkling with a hint of uncertainty.

"It's fine," he says, a touch too quickly. He can feel how easily this could stop and never manage to start again, little time as they have. "From what I've seen of this ship, I doubt you're sleeping on anything that much more comfortable."

She rolls her eyes. "Ass," she mutters, but the uncertainty is gone.

They lean back in.

* * *

He wakes slowly to the creak and dip of the cot beneath him as Billie leans over to pull on her boots.

"Somewhere to be?" he mumbles, heavy-lidded eyes cracked open just enough to watch her.

Billie shakes her head, laughing softly. "One of us has to go out and do the work tomorrow," she says as she stands, "and my bed really is more comfortable than this. Nothing personal."

He nods. He wants her to stay, but even barely awake like this, he doesn't let the words slip from his tongue. He's already asking too much of her. "I have a few ideas on where you should start," he says instead. "Don't leave before we can talk."

Her smile falters for a moment, and she reaches down to touch his face, fingertips resting light against his cheek. "You too, old man," she orders gently.

It's not something she needs to worry about. He won't die until he sees this done or at least sees the goal within Billie's reach. He puts his hand over hers. "I'm comfortable enough right here."


End file.
